So baseball and I have a weird history (as I’ve mentioned before). I used to be much more of a fan, in the way that every kid is — when you’re young, you need heroes and role models, and usually sports is a pretty good place to get those. My brother and I were big fans of Ozzie Smith and Brett Hull, not so much because we were good at baseball or because we knew how to play, but just because we knew who they were and had posters (that we’d gotten free from school or from my Dad’s work) with them on our walls. We liked them, sure — we knew Ozzie’s flips and we watched Hull and Oates skate on the ice at the St. Louis Arena — but we followed them because we were told to, not because we knew anything about them. When you’re a kid, that’s probably the best way to do it.

When you grow up, however, the foggy heroes of legend start to come into focus, and then you realize they’re just people, people with jobs and performance reviews and tempers and problems and so on. Not that they’re not great (nobody would argue that Hull and Ozzie weren’t greats), but they’re real, in a way you don’t realize when you’re a kid. I think the baseball strike was when I really started giving up on sports. I was still only 14, so I didn’t really understand the whole thing (and I still don’t, except that I can guess why any given strike tends to happen), but that was definitely the point that I remembered thinking sports weren’t that fun anymore. Coincidentally, that’s about when I started high school, where I joined the drama department, and figured out I wanted to work in broadcasting. So who knows — if baseball had never gone on strike, maybe I’d be a crazy jock dude instead of a guy who writes about tech and video games.

No, on second thought, I’d probably still be into the video games.

But this recent fascination with baseball for me is coming at a completely different angle. I’ve already explained (follow the link above) how I came to be a Cubs fan, despite living in St. Louis for so much of my life. But even then, I wasn’t sure if my “year with the Cubs” would be an ongoing thing, or just an in-the-moment experience. Watching all of those games last year could have just been a fad for me — I just happened to be living near Wrigley, I just happened to go to bars full of people discussing the games, and all of the team’s games just happened to be on my television. When baseball started up again (which is what’s happening this week in Arizona), would I still care? Or would I move on to follow something else?

If this week is any indication, I’ll still care. I’m surprised with myself — I’m pouring over news and rumors of who’s coming back with the team and what the lineup will be like, I’m following the old familiar faces on Twitter again, and I think I’m going to make the most serious investment in my baseball fandom yet: $100 to subscribe to the league’s Internet video service, which will offer me up video of all of this year’s baseball games in streaming HD whenever I want them. (I would kind of rather watch them on TV, but I think I’m going to hook my MacBook up to my TV with HDMI anyway, so hopefully I will get to watch the good Len and Bob broadcast in HD that way.) I’ve thrilled to the earliest news of the Cubs’ spring training games (we’ve won both so far — not that it matters, but I am excited anyway), and the thing I’m perhaps most excited about is that there’s every indication that my favorite player, Kosuke Fukudome (who I hear has been earning a great nickname around the clubhouse), is going to have a great year. He should, too — the Cubs could use it.

In other words, I’m in. I’m surprising even myself — I’m not a sports guy, and I don’t usually have the stamina to keep up with a whole season, much less start in on another one (my few attempts to join fantasy leagues usually have me forgetting to check the stats a week or two in). But for some reason, this is clicking with me now, and I’m really excited to be a fan again this year.

Why? It’s not the same as when I was a kid. Back then, I used to listen to Jack Buck with a reverence, and marvel at Ozzie and all of the other guys like they were larger than life. Nowadays, I feel much more equal. I know how a business works, and I know how the team works, and that they need to win X games to match a record, or X hits for a bonus. I know what the broadcast guys have been through during a long road trip, and I can hear what it’s like in their voices when they’re running on far too little sleep (because I’ve done the same thing myself). And sometimes I even feel more experienced than these guys, not in a bad way, but in a way that makes me realize what I’ve learned from my own life. Some of them are even younger than I am, and so when Zambrano throws a fit during a bad game, I think of the same kinds of frustrations I’ve dealt with in my life, and what might be the right way to deal with them.

The kid that was me didn’t think any of that stuff — he didn’t even realize, I think, that Hull was getting paid, or that he had a life outside of the rink (yes, like you were surprised when you saw your teacher at the grocery store). But the fact that I’ve learned so much about people, and that these young guys playing sports are real people, kind of makes me appreciate the whole circus more.

And to be honest, I have finally landed on one of the great truths of sports fanmanship — you feel good when your team wins. Sure, you feel bad when they lose (and c’mon, I chose the Cubs, I know what that feels like), but you could be having a terrible day when suddenly the bats start to light up, and your team wins by three. You step outside after that, and even though it’s raining and you’re in a hurry, you smile anyway. Because no matter what else happens, the Cubs won today.